John Podhoretz hits the nail on the head (“It’s Never Been About Palestine,” PostOpinion, Jan. 31).

From its inception, Israel has served as a convenient scapegoat for the ills plaguing the Mideast.

Unfortunately, there is nothing to suggest that this misguided hatred will change anytime soon.

Gerald Jacobs

Staten Island

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Podhoretz has it half-right when he writes that Israel is only a sideshow in the continuing Mideast melodrama.

If Israel were defeated by her enemies, occupying armies from Egypt, Syria and Lebanon would divide the land, and that would be the last that anyone heard of a Palestinian nation.

Until that day, the reality is that the Jews have a state, and it’s the most successful one in the neighborhood. Rectifying that unacceptable situation is of greater urgency than the high price of bread or the unemployment rate.

Joseph L. Koenig

Manhattan

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The idea that the vexing Israeli/Palestinian issue is the sole cause of Arab discontent was never credible, except in progressive precincts, where feelings trump facts and hand-wringing is viewed as deeply felt concern.

Our disreputable bipartisan policy of coddling tyrants had short-term benefits but long-term problems, as the anti-American flavor of the Egyptian revolt illustrates.

Israel remains a bed of Arab anger and must be alert to any move by a post-Mubarak Egypt to revoke the peace treaty that has maintained relative calm for three decades.

Perhaps the State Department will be more alert to this potential problem than it was to anger in the Egyptian streets.

Paul Bloustein

Cincinnati

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The Arab man wants food on the table and the ability to find work for himself and his sons. But there is a huge disconnect between the people rioting in Tunisia, Yemen and Cairo, and the “sclerotic regimes of preposterously long duration.”

It is understandable that the dictators would nourish the myth that if only the “Palestinian” state could replace Israel, all would be well in the Mideast. What is inexcusable is that America kept pressuring Israel to give up its tiny bit of land to the Arabs.

This “comforting mirage that gulled foreign-policymakers for four decades” has hopefully now been exposed for the lie that it is.